Everyone’s talking about South Korea’s upcoming internet speeds: the country’s largest ISP, SK Broadband, has announced its plans to introduce a 10gbps service- let’s say that again: that’s ten gigabits per second. Put another way: a full-length HD-quality movie at that speed will download in just seven seconds.

Keep in mind that Korea already has one of the fastest internet speeds in the world, averaging 25mbps (or double that of America). But this will blow everyone out of the water.

South Korea has had quite a stormy time these last few years. The Sewol Ferry disaster is still causing headaches for the government, compounded by fresh news coverage of thousands of Korean tourists who abuse women in other countries, such as Vietnam and the Philippines, where reports of Korean comfort women, left abandoned and pregnant, are growing every day.

Certainly, it is in the field of technology that Korea is progressing best; the success of companies such as Samsung and LG, as well as South Korea’s forward strides in things like robot development.

The other day, I was walking around the mall when a huge display caught my eye in what usually is an open space. Samsung was holding a special exhibit, and special it was! The Series 9 laptops have been the talk of the town for a while now, although I don’t know too many people getting their hands on one. It seems, though, that Samsung has struck gold with this series, making their thin laptops a feasible alternative to Apple’s MacBook Airs. And if expanding the line is anything to go by, then Samsung has really done a good job with the initial offerings.

The news is that there are new 13.3-inch versions which are part of the Series 9 laptops. First comes the NP900X3A-B01US, which comes with an Core i5-2467M CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB solid-state drive. This configuration will cost you a nice $1,349.

If the 128GB storage is not enough for you (understandably, if the laptop is going to be your main computer, that storage space needs to be bumped up), then the next model might be more to your liking – the NP900X3A-B02US. It has similar specs to the previous laptop, except that the SSD is 256GB. The price tag for this configuration is $1,649.

Now for the big boy – the NP900X3A-A05US. This laptop has a Core i7-2617M, 6GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD – all for $2,049.

Of course, it is to be expected that the additions to the line up includes smaller sized laptops. The Samsung Series 9 is also welcoming two new laptops in the 11-inch models. The NP900X1B-A02US has a Core i3-2357M processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 64GB SSD. The price is $1,049.

The other option is the NP900X3A-A01US, with the same processor as above, but more RAM at 4GB and more storage space at 128GB (SSD as well). This is priced at $1,249.

My first thoughts – beautifully sleek, but disappointingly pricey. Why would I want to go for these laptops if they are not way cheaper than the MacBook Airs? Then again, for people who want the look without leaving Windows, these laptops are perfect. Another thing going for these laptops is the material used to make the case – duralumin, which is supposed to be twice as strong as aluminum.

Watch out for their release next month, although I hear some stores are already offering them on a pre-order basis.

There was a time when I thought that 80 GB of hard drive space was more than enough to meet my needs. My good old netbook quickly ran out of space, though, and before I knew it, I found myself shopping around for a portable external drive. With every laptop change, the higher I went with regard to capacity. The need for more space is always there, though, and it seems that nothing but external hard drives will solve the issue. For sure, you have been in similar situations, and you’ll be thrilled to know that Samsung has recently launched a new hard drive for laptops with a whopping 1 terabyte capacity!

The new hard drive follows the industry standard for laptops – 9.5mm 2.5 in form factor, making it usable for practically any laptop. Dubbed Spinpoint M8, the hard drive not only boosts storage capacity, but it also lessens power consumption. Samsung says that it uses 8 percent less power – or thereabouts. More so, the performance of the hard drive is also 7 percent better than its counterparts.

If that is not enough to convince you (I don’t know, they got me at 1 TB), you might also want to know that Samsung makes use of the NoiseGuard technology, which will lessen that annoying sound that your hard drive may have when working hard. And in case you tend to drop your electronics, the Spinpoint M8’s chassis has been designed to improve shock protection.

Samsung is already producing the Spinpoint M8 and says that it will be available worldwide. In the US, the hard drive has been tagged at $129. Not bad at all!

I don’t know if this is a prototype for a future product or this is something Samsung did just for the heck of it, but they have a new 14-inch OLED laptop which has a transparent screen. I do have to give Samsung plus points for innovation. This may look like a totally impractical laptop to have, but you can’t fault them for not taking a risk.

To be fair though, since OLEDs don’t need a backlight and that would result in a much thinner screen. We’d get a more portable laptop than ever. I’m pretty sure that Samsung’s OLED laptop won’t necessarily be transparent or the transparency can be controlled. Transparent computer screens even have their uses. [Read more…]

The global economic crisis is really making its presence felt in the computer hardware industry with the regular news of company reorganizations and various measures being undertaken to weather the economic storm.

One significant news that has come out recently is Taiwan’s decision to set up a new company that aims to band together various local memory chip manufacturers and infuse it with technology that it will get either from Elpida of Japan or Micron from the US.

The Taiwan government is spearheading this so called restructuring the the country’s dynamic random access memory manufacturing sector in the hopes of helping it get its footing and make it more stable because at present, it is suffering from heavy financial losses in the last few quarters because of so much oversupply.

The foundations of this move was actually begun last December when Taiwan’s top DRAM makers, namely Powerchip, Nanya Technology and ProMOS, began working with the government on formulating a restructuring plan that would lead to proposals to team up with Elpida and Micron.

The new company will be called Taiwan Memory Company and this new entity will initiate and continue research, production and brand marketing so that it could better compete with the leading global players like Samsung and Hynix.